“…clinical trials may see a substantial savings in costs and an increase in overall quality when a number of pharmacokinetic or biomarker samples can be collected, and thus analyzed, on dried blood spot cards, rather than as a plasma sample.”

Clinical trials in patients often require a large amount of sampling from the participating volunteers. Prior to inclusion in the study, blood samples are taken to be able to judge whether or not the volunteering patient’s condition complies with the criteria in the protocol and often samples are also drawn to achieve baseline values of a number of parameters. During the trial, patients visit their physician for further examination and it is not uncommon to draw a number of blood samples during those visits. Depending on the phase of the program and the type of drug under development, the number of blood samples collected during a clinical study can range from a few hundred to many thousands.